The Protector (Fire's Edge #4) - Abigail Owen Page 0,69

residence.

What the seven hells? “Check the other buildings.”

“Sir.”

They split up to go faster, and every space he checked told the same story. Beds left in haste. Dishes in sinks or on tables. The scent of recent bodies inside and out. The settlement had been abandoned. Quickly.

Slamming the last door behind him, he strode across the wide-open space at the center of the so-called town just as Roan emerged from the woods. “I found a trail.”

“Good.” Roan’s expression flattened, and Tineen narrowed his eyes. “What else?”

“I smell that old Huracán dragon, Deep, here.”

Fury hit a slow boil. Had Deep been here while he’d been distracted with his new mate? Or before? “Follow the black dragons’ trail and report.”

As Roan shifted to obey the order, Tineen yanked out a satellite phone from the pack he carried when he traveled. He didn’t dare use his cell phone for this.

“Xi,” the man on the end answered.

“Report.”

“All quiet here.”

“Boss?” Roan’s voice broke through.

“Hold on—”

He muted the call and waited for his second.

“The trail goes cold heading south.”

“To the Huracáns?” Roan would still be close enough to pick up the sound of the words.

“Can’t be sure. Fucking black dragons.”

Tineen tipped his head back to glare at the star-studded sky above. He put the satellite phone to his ear. “Contact Mathai and inform him that the black dragon mate in my chambers needs to be moved to the Alliance headquarters immediately.” Wasting his resources on keeping her bitch of a mate from trying to get her back wasn’t his focus right now. “Also, bring the men in the field back. Put the men currently in headquarters on standby. I want drills run until I return.” He hung up on Xi’s yes, sir. He couldn’t put them on full alert. The Alliance would learn of it and want to know why.

If any one of the Huracáns or his new mate or her fucking orphans ran, they would need to follow. He planned to be ready.

He shifted and took to the air. Rapidly gaining altitude, he caught up to Roan who held in wait for him. “I’m heading back to headquarters.”

“And me?”

“Stick to the plan. Go back to the Huracán mountain and watch those traitors for any movement in or out.”

“You got it.” Roan tipped his wings and disappeared into the night.

Tineen, seething with every beat of his wings, was tempted to follow his beta. Gut instinct told him he should just go back and take Lyndi now, force their hands instead of waiting for them to play this out. But he needed to get that newly turned mate, still held in his room, to the Alliance first. The sooner she was off his hands the better. He’d lost one of the pair. He wouldn’t lose the other, dammit.

But Lyndi—she was the prize. The catalyst. He’d waited for this moment since the second those cowards in the Alliance hadn’t taken the entire Huracán team down after Yosemite. Now he would. He could taste it. He just had to keep his end goal in mind.

…

Deliberately, the entire journey to the Alaz mountain, a straightforward route to stick to her story of being there for her mating, took several days to give Levi and the boys more time to get away. Lyndi had struggled to keep her focus on what was coming. Every cell in her body, every thought, had been where her heart was. Somewhere on the way to the Alaskan wilderness.

Had they gotten away okay? How far had they made it? Had they run across any trouble? Would she see them again?

But now that she was here, the towering peaks of the Rockies all around her as she used every skill at her disposal to follow Shula up the Alaz mountain, she had to focus.

Getting in would be the easy part. They had a plan. She and Shula had flown to the base of the mountain and climbed their way up until they were perched against the bare rockface, out of sight of where the main entrance was hidden. If the Alaz sensors and cameras were the same as the Huracáns’, they were searching for dragons coming at them, not humans.

Mental note to tell Drake to change that situation.

A shadow flashed overhead, and Lyndi froze and held her breath, slowing her heartrate. She needn’t have bothered. A red dragon swooped down to the flat ledge above her and Shula’s hiding spot. Deep. The distraction.

He flew directly to the front dragon entrance and essentially knocked on the door with a